“I think it’s important to build a hip-hop culture in Japan,” BAD HOP rapper YZERR tells Apple Music. “We need to show this attitude to the next generation. We wanted to create an album that would become a textbook for the young people who have roles in the new hip-hop scene.” BAD HOP’s 2019 Lift Off EP brought them international attention, thanks to killer production from Mike WiLL Made-It, Murda Beatz, Metro Boomin, and Mustard, among other US heavy hitters. With BAD HOP WORLD, they plan to stretch their influence even further. “We’ve crammed in everything over the past three years, and we put in a lot of enthusiasm,” YZERR says. “We felt that we could not even waste one day until the album was finished,” adds G-k.i.d. Below, six of BAD HOP’s eight members—YZERR, G-k.i.d, Tiji Jojo, Vingo, Bark, and Benjazzy—talk through each song on BAD HOP WORLD. Intro Bark: “It was [BAD HOP’s] T-Pablow who gave me the idea of the intro that would lead to the entire album. ‘How about a story like this?’ he said. From there, we wrote it together.” The Lead Benjazzy: “The song features beats and guitar sounds we haven’t used in previous BAD HOP songs. We tried to rap over it in many different ways.” G-k.i.d: “When we entered the recording booth, the beat threw down vibes like we were going to a brawl.” Round One YZERR: “We originally made three songs with the same theme, worried about them until the last minute, and chose the best one of the three.” Bat Man Benjazzy: “We made this song because we wanted something absolutely intense for live concerts. It’s a beat that’s not trendy in the US right now, so we chewed it up and put our original flavor on it.” Vingo: “It has an irregular structure, with Bark entering from the midpoint, and thankfully I was able to kick a verse.” Bark: “We thought it would be interesting if there was only four bars before my low-toned voice comes in.” Project Boy YZERR: “When T-Pablow went to China, he said the scene at the housing complexes was cool. I wanted to make a song about that theme with the two of us rapping together. We wanted to look back on the past and create a song about where we came from.” May Day G-k.i.d: “We wanted to do a song with a lot of collaboration, so we started making it using the beats that [BAD HOP’s] Yellow Pato brought to us. After that, we called Tiji Jojo, and it became the song. In the lyrics we touched on the concert we held at the Yokohama Arena without an audience [which was streamed online due to COVID-19]. When the curtains on the arena stage opened, it was quite a shock. Such a big place—it was a strange feeling.” Tiji Jojo: “I actually thought it was a fresh experience—something I’ll never have the chance to experience again. It was a feeling I’ve almost never felt before.” Suicide Tiji Jojo: “The topic of suicide was often in the news while we were working on these songs. We’ve never made a song like this before, but we thought about what would happen [if we took our own lives]. We were very careful about choosing the words.” Chop Stick Benjazzy: “We wanted to create an image of Japan, so I wanted to write the song in easy-to-understand Japanese.” Vingo: “We wanted to introduce Japanese culture and words that are already familiar with rappers from overseas, like dojo, sensei, or kakkoii. I wasn’t sure how to make the hook for the beat, so it took many takes.” 18 YZERR: “We wrote the song as we wanted to have this kind of beat on the album, and the flow also makes it feel smooth. The lyrics have a slightly shy feeling.” High Land YZERR: “This song might have been the one we worked hardest on. I wanted to make the rap easy to understand. We were really conscious of the balance between each of our voices, and we took care not to have the feeling lost behind the beat.” Choice Vingo: “We had various issues on our minds, like our flows and the recording process. We were having problems in the studio when we produced this song, but we were receiving a lot of advice from others—and someone said, ‘Anyway, just get high.’” Wanted List Benjazzy: “This topic is something that has been around for about two years. We liken it to a bounty going up as our stage performances get better and better.” Bark: “We also devised ways to change the tone in our voices to sound new and to increase the tension. Recording was a challenge.” My Turn Tiji Jojo: “This song was really difficult to make, and it remains the most memorable. It seems simple, but the flow is challenging. It was hard for us to squeeze the Japanese words into this flow, and the melodic scale was very detailed.” YZERR: “Tiji Jojo and I made this track while singing spontaneously. We found it difficult to sing properly in a calm voice on the beat while maintaining a rhythm. The whole album was produced in a way that may seem simple, but was actually so challenging to make.” Bayside Dream YZERR: “T-Pablow worked on this one carefully and deliberately. The lyrics are about many things and have many punchlines. You can’t make a song this awesome without a tremendous amount of skill.” Benjazzy: “When I saw the lyrics that T-Pablow sent me, I knew this would be a good song, and I thought a lot about what I should sing. I always wanted to sing about the city of Kawasaki, which is an industrial area and a port town, so I thought about that and refined my verses.” Super Wave YZERR: “A number of songs on the album feel quite heavy, so we wanted to put an uplifting track at the end of the album.” G-k.i.d: “The lyrics on the rest of the album are rather aggressive, so I wrote this song with fresh optimism.” Hood Gospel Bark: “It’s a song on which T-Pablow headed up the production, and he said, ‘If you create it with this sense of sound, it will be fresh and original.’ It was the first song we completed during the album’s production, and it’s the most memorable one. His lyrics are unlike anything he’s used before.”